by Dennis Foley
The colonel’s tone changed to a harsh, clipped delivery. “I didn’t ask for your opinion on my selection. Now don’t give me any grief on this. Just do it, Captain!”
Hollister quickly stood and came to attention. He knew he didn’t like Valentine, but there was no sense arguing with him. “Yes, sir. Will that be all?”
“I want to see what you’ve got for me in five days. You’re dismissed.”
Lieutenant Garland, Hollister, Colonel Valentine, and Sergeant Major Sawyer entered the 5th Platoon bay, on C Company’s second floor. It wasn’t like a normal platoon bay. The double swinging doors had been replaced by a wire mesh that filled the hole and had its own smaller, locking door.
From the long hallway, anyone could see the entire length of the platoon bay. It contained only two doorless wall lockers, a dozen red butt cans, and two fire extinguishers.
Garland led the others through the locked cage door to the wall lockers. “Colonel, this is the basic issue for each of the—trainees,” he said, stumbling over what they would call the new, special charges.
There, laid out on the shelves in the locker, was one sleeping bag, an aluminum GI mess kit with only a single large spoon, a canteen and cup, a double-edged safety razor, a toothbrush, and a bar of GI soap.
“We’re thinking the less they have, the less likely they’ll be to conceal drugs—not to mention the fact that they’ll be miserable,” Garland said.
“Add a New Testament,” Colonel Valentine said.
The lieutenant wrote a reminder in a small spiral notebook. “They’ll be stripped down to their boxer shorts at the door, and nothing will be allowed in the room but their basic issue of equipment and the trainees themselves.”
“Uniforms for training?” Valentine asked.
“Each morning they will be issued fatigues, socks, boots, and clean underwear. They’ll turn in everything but the boxer shorts when they return to the platoon bay in the evenings.”
“Okay,” Valentine said. “You get your first batch of trainees this week.”
The late news was more of the same. Casualties were mounting, opposition to the war in the streets in America was always good copy for Cronkite, and the Paris peace talks droned on. Hollister opened the refrigerator door for another beer and then checked his watch. It would be easy to have another beer, but he passed. Putting on his field jacket over his fatigues, Hollister picked up his car keys and stepped back to the door. He stopped long enough to look around his empty BOQ room before he turned the light out.
He decided to park across the street from the company and walk over rather than pull into his reserved parking space. He knew from experience the only way to find out what is really going on at night in your own company is to arrive unannounced.
The Charge of Quarters almost turned over the first sergeant’s chair trying to get his feet off the desk and onto the floor. He stood at attention and reported to Captain Hollister, the boot he was polishing still encasing his left hand and forearm.
“Evening,” Hollister said.
“Good evening, sir. I’m just trying to—”
“I’m sure you were trying to do something you felt needed to be done.”
“I just finished checking the fire lights and posted the KP roster for tomorrow morning, and I—”
“As you were,” Hollister said, trying to get the soldier to relax.
“Thank you, sir. Is there anything I can help you with?”
“Nope, just want to walk through and make sure you guys haven’t got every hooker from Phenix City up here tonight.”
The soldier looked at Hollister for some sign and then smiled when he noticed that Hollister had. He stepped out from behind the desk and grabbed the large wire loop holding the keys to every lock in the company area.
“Stay here. I can find my way around,” Hollister said.
The hallways were empty and there was little movement in the barracks. Midweek, there was usually some late-night gabfest going in one of the cadre rooms, but Hollister noticed the lack of such get-togethers in the past weeks. It was a bad sign—a sign of sagging morale.
As he climbed the stairs and walked down the hallway to the 5th Platoon bay, he thought of the troubles in his brigade—increased drug and racial problems, plenty of disputes over petty arguments, and fights—lots of fights. It all meant morale. He’d been a soldier long enough to be sure about that.
“Good evening, sir,” Sergeant Reid, a squad leader from the 1st Platoon, said as he stood from the chair he had been balancing on its back legs.
Hollister reached out and grabbed the folding metal chair before it tipped back against the cinder-block wall—making a racket. “Evening, Sergeant Reid. How’s it going tonight?”
The acting security guard gestured toward the darkened platoon bay. “’S been real quiet, sir. Had a little trouble earlier when some assholes from the fifth of the thirty-first rolled by outside and started yelling crap up at these people.”
“What did they do?”
“They yelled shit back at them.”
Hollister smiled. “At least they haven’t completely lost their spirit. Let’s take a look.”
Reid stuck the key in the lock to open the wire-mesh door to the darkened bay. Hollister could hear the sounds of one of his charges sleeping heavily, punctuating the dark with pumplike breathing.
Suddenly, both Hollister and Reid spotted a dim flicker of light behind a single wall locker. It had been moved away from a wall and butted up against the support beam at the far end of the bay.
Reid and Hollister walked toward the light. They were careful to avoid the dozen soldiers who slept cocoonlike in their sleeping bags on the hard tile floor.
At the locker, Hollister took the flashlight from Reid. Its beam found the naked body of a young soldier, faceup on the floor. Next to him, a short candle burned—throwing eerie light patterns across his face.
The boy was still, the color drained from his face—his eyes wide open.
Then Hollister saw it—a hypodermic needle still dangling from the soldier’s forearm.
Not waiting to figure it all out, Hollister immediately checked the boy for any signs of breathing or a heartbeat. Training—army training—ran through his head. Clear the airway. Stop the bleeding. Protect the wound. Treat or prevent shock.
“Get to the phone. Get an ambulance here—now!”
Before Reid had made it to the end of the bay, Hollister had popped the soldier’s neck back, opened his mouth, and begun mouth-to-mouth breathing.
There was no response. But Hollister wouldn’t quit. He gave the soldier four quick, forceful breaths and then found the spot just above the bottom of his sternum and began chest massage.
Reid quickly returned, bringing the company’s senior medic with him. Together, they continued CPR for fifteen more minutes—until the ambulance arrived.
Even though the medics kept up the heart massage and the mouth-to-mouth all the way out of the building, Hollister knew. He had seen enough dead soldiers to know. This one would never recover.
With the lights on and everyone in the bay awake, Hollister stood them all up and made them come to the spot behind the wall locker to see what was there.
“You fuckers think this is all a joke—this drug shit. Huh?”
None of them replied.
“You see this? You know what this is?” Hollister held up a mess-kit spoon with a greasy residue in it and the hypodermic needle. In the other hand he held up the bottom half of a Kiwi shoe-polish can. “He shot the oil out of this shoe polish in his fucking veins! Shoe polish.”
The twelve trainees, all still wearing only their boxer shorts, looked away from Hollister to avoid making eye contact
“How fucking stupid do you have to be to shoot this shit into your body?” Hollister screamed. He didn’t wait for an answer and didn’t expect one. Frustrated, he threw the can across the room and walked toward the exit.
At the doorway, Reid locked the lock and looked
at Hollister—fearfully.
“I don’t want you to tell me how this happened. But by tomorrow afternoon, I want you in my office with your take on how we can stop this from ever happening again. We fucked up. Let’s see if we can make something right come of it.”
It was nearly two A.M. when Hollister started to leave his orderly room. On the way out, he ran into four MPs and a medic who were carrying a soldier up the stairs to the 5th Platoon bay.
“Mornin’, Cap’n,” the medic said.
“What’s this?” Hollister asked.
“Got a new customer for you. He’s real fucked up on LSD.”
“From?”
“The day room over at Headquarters Company,” the medic said, trying to keep a grip on the wriggling soldier, wrapped tightly in two wet sheets.
Hollister could tell the temperature was starting to get to the soldier—his lips were turning a gray-blue. The first time he saw a drug user wrapped up that way, the medic had explained it. The evaporating water caused the soldier’s body temperature to drop to the point where he was more concerned with how cold he was and less of a threat to anyone or himself. And the wet sheets served as a body handcuff. It was almost impossible to break free of the wrap if it was done right.
“We’re gonna take him upstairs and put him to bed,” the medic said.
Hollister put on his hat and continued down the stairs. “I don’t particularly care what you do with him. You can leave him in those sheets all night—as far as I’m concerned.”
It took two more hours to fill out the paperwork at the hospital and a half hour collecting the few personal items the dead soldier had—a Saint Christopher medal, a high-school class ring, and a wedding band.
Hollister would have to write yet another letter to another widow.
CHAPTER 4
IT HAD BEEN FOUR days since they had seen Sraang. Krong put on his finest clothes and, accompanied by two of the other elders, walked down the mountain to the South Vietnamese Army outpost.
Sergeant Thoang, in charge of the tiny outpost guarding the bridge over the small river flowing out of the hills, acted surprised that the Montagnard headman would accuse South Vietnamese soldiers of carrying off one of his young girls. He laughed. “Maybe she just felt it was time for her to find a man on her own.”
Krong’s Vietnamese was not that good, but he understood the games and the insults. He looked at the faces of the Vietnamese soldiers lounging around in hammocks, eating pineapple slices, and listening to a radio. They giggled like children. Krong recognized two of the faces. They had come to his village the night they took Sraang away. He pointed them out “They know where she is. They took her from us,” he said in broken French and Vietnamese.
Sergeant Thoang leaped to his feet. “What? You accuse my men? Are you stupid, old man? I can have you thrown in prison for collaborating with the Viet Cong.” He thrust his hand out and wagged his fingers in Krong’s face—a serious insult in both cultures. He then swung his arm around and pointed at the lazy soldiers. “Apologize—now! Now, old man.”
Krong was too proud to apologize. He just shook his head and acted as if he was confused by the language problems. Then, without excuse, he turned and walked back up the road toward his village. Behind him, the South Vietnamese soldiers laughed at the old man and the little girl who was missing. The parts he could understand were painful.
Krong, Jrae, Jrae’s son, and one of the dogs sat together in Krong’s longhouse. Since his wife had died, three years earlier, Krong had often asked his grandchildren in to be with him in the evenings. But this night it was particularly awkward because Sraang was not in her place.
“We go to the new camp?” Jrae asked.
“I have seen the camps. They are no place for our kind. They are pens no better than pigs are kept in.”
“If we stay?”
“If we stay here, we will die.”
“And if we go?” she asked.
“And if we go, our kind will die out.”
She said nothing while the old man closed his eyes and listened to his own words.
After a long time, she put her son down on her blanket and walked back to the cooking area to get some food for her grandfather. It was only then that she let herself cry for him and for all of them. She didn’t want him to see her cry.
Krong waited outside the team house for Sergeant Jackie Beck. The sun beat down on the old man, and the dust blew in swirls along the roadway paralleling the Special Forces compound on the outskirts of Da Lat. He watched the trucks and motorbikes as they raced by on the other side of the chain-link fence. There were fences everywhere he looked.
In his life, he had thought fences were only built to keep pigs out of the crops but never to keep men in or out of a place. He knew when his people were moved down from the hills to the relocation camp, they would suffer the confinement of the fences. The thought caused him to feel pain in his chest. For him, their spirit would forever be damaged by limiting their freedom to move about their rain forest.
The aging village chief also knew they couldn’t continue to suffer the late-night raids by the Vietnamese on both sides of the war. He had to move his people to where they would be safe, or he would see them all die or be carried off in the night.
Sergeant Jackie Beck was one of the new breed of Special Forces soldiers. Vietnam was his first Green Beret assignment. He had hoped to go to a detachment somewhere on the Cambodian or Lao border, but found himself on temporary duty in Da Lat helping the South Vietnamese relocate the Montagnards. He was promised a better job as soon as the Yards were all moved.
He exited the office with Captain Nguyen in trail. Nguyen was a South Vietnamese captain, tasked with providing the vehicles to move the Montagnards. Beck had quickly learned that there was no love lost between the Montagnards and the Vietnamese. And Nguyen was in no hurry to get anything done. He had promised Beck they would make the arrangements to have Krong’s people moved, soon. But soon had dragged on too long for Beck and for Krong’s people.
Krong and Nguyen stood mute while Beck did all the talking. “We will come today to make the final survey of your village so Dai Uy Nguyen can draw the right vehicles to get your folks and their things moved all at once.”
Krong liked Beck. He didn’t know Beck was somewhat of a mountain man himself. Beck grew up in the north Georgia mountains. Though they were separated by half a globe, Krong knew he could trust the twenty-four-year-old soldier with the big grin and freckles on his forearms.
That day Krong went back to his village and announced the decision to move. He was met with little resistance. The others too were drained and heartsick at the losses and the repeated toll exacted from them.
Some days later Beck found Krong, again squatting outside his office. He tried to apologize for the week’s delay, but to do so would have been to blame Captain Nguyen for the holdup. So Beck simply lied and said they were having trouble in the motor pool and the jeep he had drawn needed some work before they could use it to drive up to Krong’s village.
Beck knew Krong had walked alone the twenty-five miles to see him. He offered to feed him and then to drive him back to Yoon Dlei village.
Krong appreciated Beck’s gesture. And even though the American food was strange to his taste, it was still filling.
It was dark by the time Sergeant Beck and Krong turned off the hard-top road in the valley onto the red-dirt trail leading to Krong’s village.
Beck was a little anxious about driving into the highlands at night, but wanted not to give the old man the idea that he was afraid. Still, he strained to look out at the limits of the headlights painting the trees along the roadway.
After an hour, the roadway became increasingly difficult for the jeep. There would be no way Captain Nguyen’s trucks could make it up the road to the village. They would need choppers.
Watching the road and deep in thought, Beck didn’t notice the look of alarm that came over Krong’s face. Krong reached out and grabbed Bec
k’s arm for him to stop the jeep and shut off the engine.
The sounds of the rain forest were silenced by the presence of the jeep. Wildlife stood mute, and only a whisper of the wind moved through the treetops. Beck killed the lights and looked over to Krong, who strained to hear something.
Beck heard it, too. Up ahead of them there seemed to be a woman’s voice—crying, then silent, then crying again.
Beck and Krong stepped cautiously from a tree line surrounding the stilted, tribal longhouses. Unsure of what they were about to find, neither man wanted to walk down the road directly into the front gate of the village. They could see the flames of the burning longhouses.
Just inside the tree line perimeter, Krong spotted a body. It was Toong—his lifelong friend. The man’s body was on its side. A large circle of blood pooled underneath him, and his matted hair was pulled from its perpetual tight knot—falling across his face.
Beck saw the body, too, but said nothing. Instead, he stepped toward it, bent down, and gently turned it over, confirming the elder’s death. He looked at Krong, who was fixed on something across the compound near the smoking remains of two of the longhouses. It was Jrae, wearing only a tattered loincloth. Near her was the body of her baby—motionless.
She stood in horror, tied to the base of a large mahogany tree, her face contorted by pain. Spittle threaded from the corner of her open mouth down across her nearly naked body as she sobbed in convulsive heaves.
Her eyes searched for the impossible—some sign in Beck’s eyes that would tell her her son was still alive.
Beck looked around at the starburst, scorch-marked depressions on the ground around her son’s body, then at the boy, and then to Krong. His expression told Krong there was no hope for the little boy.
Jrae caught Krong’s expression, let out a shriek of pain, and collapsed in her agony.
Beck guessed the Viet Cong made the mother watch while they tossed hand grenades at the terrified little boy. He closed his eyes for just a moment to absorb the horror of it and then motioned for Krong to work his way over to Jrae—to be careful, knowing the mother was ripe to be booby-trapped.